Palace of Clouds
Page 27
The ranges in Seoul were more shooter- friendly than the ones in San Sebastian—there was no additional problem with strong winds or fog and the Korean hosts were extremely friendly and co-operative. We had hired two cars: one for the Bikaner party and the other for the Kota party. My father used to call our drivers ‘moja’, a literal translation being a sock! But they were lovely people who genuinely cared for us and made sure that we were comfortable at all times. This time round in Seoul we were a large group. Kanwar Man Singh was also part of our five-member shooting team and my great aunt Maharani Kota had also joined us on this trip. Normally we used to have our lunch at the ranges but in the evening we all gathered together at the restaurant for dinner and it was a lively little group as we chatted about the events of the day and our scores.
The weather was quite cold as I recall and at some point in the match, Kuku Jija decided to drop out after winning the team event. This made me the only woman participating in the competition. Normally, in the ladies event one shot 100 targets and the men double that. Since there was no separate ladies event I had to shoot 200 targets which was both tiring as well as stressful. The feather in our cap was to win the trap team bronze medal. Unfortunately Man Singh was not shooting his best towards the end or else we might have bagged the silver medal. However, it was a matter of great pride and satisfaction to get the bronze team medal after the long drawn out matches.
My father in his shooting memoirs writes:
‘At this stage of 150 targets and at end of the team event Bhuvaneshwari Kumari decided to drop out. She found the cold too much and she had already helped India win the Bronze Medal, so I as team Captain agreed to her dropping out. However, Rajyashree continued to shoot, and from here on she was the only woman shooter to participate in the full 200 targets course of fire in Traps. Rajyashree’s shooting at Seoul however, was excellent and although she was the only girl to finish the entire 200 target Championship at Korea where she was able to finish for the 14th position among the topmost men shooters of Asia, which was to put it mildly, a creditable performance. Had there been a Ladies event I feel Rajyashree would have perhaps won a medal.’
No account of our shooting days can possibly be complete without mentioning my great aunt Princess Shiv Kanwar of Bikaner and Maharani of Kota. Kota Dadisa as we called her was the youngest daughter of Maharaja Ganga Singhji. She was a forthright and modern woman and although she was quite formidable in her demeanour, she was also at the same time, capable of being light-hearted and fun. She was always enormously kind to us and was very fond of my father, her nephew. Princess Bhuvneshwari Kumari was her younger daughter. Kota Dadisa was almost always present on the ranges when there was a match going on. Impeccably dressed in a beautiful chiffon sari and light day jewellery, she was the epitome of an aristocratic lady. Everyone called her ‘Your Majesty’ except for my father who of course called her Bhuasa and when I once called her Dadisa she ticked me off and told me that from now on I should call her Bhuasa, which I dutifully did.
Kota Dadisa was also a keen shot and entered for the ladies trap event many times. When she was shooting she would wear khaki slacks and a shirt over which she wore her shooting jacket. Her hair was always cropped short and she was quite sharp in her observation of the people around her, especially us as teenagers, usually came in for minor ticking off from time to time. She enjoyed travelling and was very well-informed about global events; more often than not, she would also accompany us on our shooting jaunts abroad and was there in Seoul when the shooting championships were taking place. Once when I visited Kota I called on her in her apartment at Umaid Bhawan Palace, where she gave me tea and then proceeded to give me a tour of her labyrinthine apartments. She led me around at a very brisk pace through an absolute maze of rooms and corridors the walls were lined with black and white photographs of our ancestors from Bikaner—her father Maharaja Ganga Singh and her brothers Maharaja Sadul Singh and Maharaj Bijey Singh. It was interesting to see her in her own environment still bearing the distinct hallmark of Bikaner.
Receiving the Arjuna Award in 1969 was undoubtedly the crowning achievement of my shooting career; it was a huge honour and made all the many years of hard practise and struggle worth the while. V.V. Giri, President of India then, was to hand over the awards at a glittering ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. I was sitting next to Prasanna, the well known cricketer, and the very next morning virtually every newspaper carried a photograph of Prasanna and me in conversation. I have no recollection of what we spoke about- very unlikely to be cricket, a game about which I know virtually nothing at all. I was extremely embarrassed at having my photograph splashed all over the cover page of the newspapers and nervous of what my school friends would think of this kind of publicity but fortunately they all took it in their stride.
My father seems to have a better recollection of that day than me and he wrote about it in his shooting memoirs:
‘On 9th December, 1969 my daughter Rajyashree, then 16 years old, was awarded the Arjuna Award, the highest sports award in our country for her shooting. She was the youngest sportsman to receive the Arjuna Award at that time to the best of my knowledge. It was a gratifying moment for me to sit in the audience and watch Rajyashree go up to the President of India V.V. Giri and receive the citation from his hands. Only a child then, she sat amongst the top sportsmen of the country who were “Kings” in their own fields, sitting in the Darbar hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, and it was a proud moment for her as it was for me. The President put his hands on her head and blessed Rajyashree. We were all deeply touched by this gesture, coming as it did from the Head of our Nation.’
‘As I will one day be “hanging up my gloves”, I do feel a sense of gratitude to the Almighty for having given me more than my share of good fortune in the clay pigeon sport. To me to have represented my country and worn the National blazer was a great honour that anything I can think of. When my daughter joined me to wear the National blazer on a father-daughter team, this became an even more gratifying experience’.
That said, my father was simply not prepared to hang up his shooting gloves any time soon. He really and truly enjoyed the sport and not only shooting but his golf and tennis too, when he was in Bikaner. He was a true sportsman at heart. I recall telling him from time to time: ‘Dad please retire now and give the rest of us a chance to climb up the ladder!’ But he was not having any of it, and he continued to enjoy his sports till the very end. In fact, the very evening he was taken ill he was getting ready to play golf at the Delhi Golf Club. After his demise, we requested Mrs. Margaret Alva who was the Sports Minister at the time if she would consider naming the Delhi shooting ranges at Tughlaqabad after my father. To our great surprise and pleasure, she readily and kindly agreed. The ranges now are known as the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range and I know that my father would have been greatly honoured and pleased with this.
In 1972, the Olympic Games were to take place at Munich in Germany. Since both my sister Madhulika and I were now old enough, my parents decided that we would both accompany them to Munich. This was to be our first time at the Games and we were both beside ourselves with excitement. Ironically, they were dubbed the ‘Happy Olympics’—they were meant to project the image of a peaceful and friendly modern Germany, all of which sadly came undone with the shocking hostage crisis that took place towards the end of the games, blighting them forever, and remembered ever since as the Games where the Israeli athletes were brutally murdered by members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
My father was part of the Indian contingent and he had been selected to shoot trap. As was normally the case my father refused to live in the Olympic village with the rest of the Indian contingent and instead made his own arrangements for us all. He was a true Maharaja and roughing it out was not his style, though he maintained that the reason he did not live with the rest of his team mates was that it upset his concentration and he was not ready to face the competition fresh the next day—but I kne
w otherwise. My father was a creature of comforts! We were ensconced in a grand hotel called Bayerischer Hof, just off the popular Marienplatz Square and close to the tube station that was to take us daily to the Olympic Village.
Since we were going to be staying there for almost ten days, the Hotel manager kindly arranged for the chef to call on us and find out our dietary requirements. I remember when my father told the chef: ‘The children can eat anything they like as long as it is not beef since it is not permitted in our Hindu religion,’ the chef enquired if we could eat veal instead since it was a baby cow! My parents who were staunch vegetarians all their lives were deeply shocked by such the suggestion: a cow was a cow whether an adult or a baby and both were not to figure on our menu at any time.
We had a most enjoyable time in Munich. The metro station was close by on Marienplatz and every morning Coach used to arrive and take my sister and me to the Olympic village where we had a great time catching up with the other Indian team members and their families and playing mini football in the recreation room and listening to the current hits on the juke box, the very popular pop tune ‘Pop Corn’ by Hot Chocolate was always playing on all the juke boxes and in my mind it’s forever associated with the amazing time we spent in Munich. My parents had a car assigned to them and also a very handsome, young, blonde German man who happened to be a Baron, and who was extremely polite and courteous and ensured that we all had a pleasant and trouble free stay in Munich.
I recall that we attended a very acrimonious hockey match that took place between India and Pakistan. Sardar Kartar Singh Sodhi was part of the shooting circuit in India and was a good friend of my father’s. He was a kind man with a great sense of humour, and could make anyone laugh out loud with his many jokes. Both Madhulika and I were sitting with Sardar Kartar Singhji during the match which was proving to be a very exciting one as the two countries clashed on the hockey field. I was obviously rooting for India and made some innocent comment which I cannot recall to which the few Pakistanis who were sitting around us took grave objection. Sardar Kartar Singh immediately came to my rescue and made light of it and with a few jokes settled the matter before it got unpleasant. India lost the match as I recall and for some reason the Pakistanis were extremely ungracious in victory and when they were presented with their medals, some of them took them off their necks and swung them around their shoes which caused the host country great offence and brought much criticism on the Pakistani team. We were of course very sorry that India lost that day but it was certainly a very exciting hockey match: as my father would say, the best side on the day wins the match.
It was an amazing privilege to be able to meet young male and female athletes and competitors from all over the world. Mark Spitz, the American swimmer was the hero of the Munich games where he won seven gold medals in his field and went on to be an Olympic champion nine times. His record in Munich was only recently broken when the American swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Sport is a great leveller and all the amazing sports stars mixed easily with us without any reserve or pride; we used to queue up for lunch in the cafeteria with all the athletes and sportspersons and they were all unfailingly polite and friendly at all times—it taught us humility. That time in Germany is something that I will always remember: it was a huge learning curve for my sister Madhulika and me and we were indeed very fortunate that our parents had brought us along.
The event that shook the entire world was when members of the PLO entered the games village by stealth one night and proceeded to the villa where the Israeli athletes were staying. The next morning we woke up to this terrible event that was unfolding before us, and we sat in our hotel suite glued to the television all day. As is the norm, under such circumstances there were all manner of rumours and conspiracy theories doing the rounds, and throughout that day I recall someone or the other kept coming to visit my father and brought a fresh round of gossip with them. The facts however, were very real and chilling.
In the random shooting that took place several athletes and their coach were gunned down. For a while there was a standoff as the German authorities negotiated the release of the hostages. Finally the terrorists demanded that a plane be fuelled and kept ready for them to fly them and the hostages to an unknown destination. The plane was readied as they had requested but there was no way that the German authorities were going to permit the terrorists to fly out of Munich taking their hostages with them. When the mini vans carrying the terrorists and hostages reached the plane, they boarded it to find that there was no crew to fly them out as they had expected. An absolute blood bath took place on the tarmac as the German sharpshooters took out the terrorists one by one, but not before they had lobbed several grenades into the minivan carrying the hostages who also perished under the most dreadful of circumstances.
The games of course continued to their conclusion with the flags flying at half mast, but the atmosphere remained tense and uneasy. What happened in Munich in 1972 was the beginning of the end of innocence; it was literally like opening up a Pandora’s Box out of which came all the horrifying hijackings, bombings and various other terrorist atrocities that swept the world thereafter for decades to come. One thing was certain: the world would never be the same again.
On our way back to India we stopped to take a short break at London for a few days. Idar Maharaj Kumar Rajendra Singh or ‘Idar baby’ and his lovely wife Pinky also happened to be in London at the same time. One day he asked my parents if he could take my sister and me out for the day and they readily agreed. Idar Bhai or ‘Baby’ and his wife took us both on a really fun day out and about in London. We were at the time staying at the Westbury Hotel on Conduit Street, from where Idar Bhai and Pinky Bhabisa came and collected us and our first stop for the day began with a visit to a fair in Battersea where we went on several rides and ate candy floss and ice cream. After lunch we proceeded to Speaker’s Corner at Hyde Park.
The British have a tradition based around their Sunday speakers. Every Sunday while amateur artists set up their paintings on the Bayswater Road which is parallel to Hyde Park, those with something to say, however bizarre and odd it maybe, come down to Hyde Park Corner and set up their soap box and begin their speeches, which range from the sensible to the most unbelievable. It is all in good fun and I don’t believe anyone takes it very seriously. Large crowds assemble, especially if it’s a sunny day; families come out and have picnics in the park and many stands around the various speakers and eat their ice creams and hot dogs while listening to them and either boo or cheer them as the case maybe. The sign of a successful speaker is the size of the crowd that gathers around him or her.
Finally, the exciting day ended at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane where we visited a bar for the first time—‘Trader Vic’s’ happened to be Idar Bhai’s favourite watering hole. He then proceeded to order a drink called a ‘banana cow’ while the three of us drank Coca Cola. It was great fun and we enjoyed it enormously. On another occasion Idar Bhai took us to a Greek restaurant where the practise was to smash plates onto the ground to indicate that you were content and enjoying the evening and the food. We were all given plates which we proceeded to happily smash on the ground, and even the waiters entered into the spirit and sometimes spontaneously burst into song or else smashed some more plates with gusto! I have never been to such a restaurant before or since for that matter and it was both different and enjoyable.
It was a lovely break before we returned to college and school respectively: it was without a doubt a very educational trip. We enjoyed the Olympics and the majesty of the opening and closing ceremonies, but we were also naturally deeply shaken by the events that had occurred at the Olympic village.
To end on a light note, we were allowed to go and do our shopping on our own by then. In any case, our hotel was so well situated that all the major shopping streets such as Oxford Street and Regent Street were within walking distance so there was not much chance of us getting lost. I r
ecall that among the many items of makeup that I bought the one that most took my fancy was a tube of eye makeup in brilliant lilac. I shudder to think of it now but at the time it was very fashionable to wear such colours, and this one from Mary Quant, who was the absolute reigning queen of fashion and makeup, an essential in any respectable teenagers’ make up box. When I got back to my room which I happened to be sharing with my sister, I found that I could not open the tube as it was tightly shut: my sister was and remains physically far stronger than me so I appealed for her assistance. She managed to put so much pressure on the tube that it burst its rear seal and she had a handful of lilac eye shadow cream. I was extremely put out by this but there was not much to be done as we were leaving for India the very next day and I have to say that my eyes were left unadorned by Mary Quant’s latest and most hot shade of lilac.
More or less at the same time as these sporting events were taking place the subject of the privy purses that the Government of India paid to the Indian princes had been a matter of debate for quite some time and finally in the early seventies it came to head. At the time of Indian Independence in 1947, it was quite clear that the five hundred odd princely states could not possibly exist as they had been thus far. They could, according to their geographical location, join either the Union of India or the soon to emerge independent state of Pakistan. The Indian princes had signed a treaty with the British and had pledged their loyalty to the King and so it fell upon Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, to free the Indian Princes from this treaty and allow them to make decisions as to their future course of action. At an emotionally charged meeting, the last Viceroy ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten informed the princes, many of whom were his close personal friends, in no uncertain terms, that it was inevitable that they sign the Instrument of Accession and merge their states with either India or Pakistan as appropriate. If they co-operated he added, then he would try and achieve the best possible terms for them with the Government of India.